In my Yizkor Book Project reports I freely talk about
Yizkor books on the assumption that everyone knows what I'm referring to. It
seems, though, that I was misguided as I learnt from a message from someone a
few weeks ago who wasn't all that clear as to what was being talked about.
Therefore, to explain - Yizkor books
were written after the Holocaust as memorials to Jewish communities destroyed
in the Holocaust and were usually compiled
by émigré organizations from those communities and contain descriptions
and histories of the community, biographies of prominent people, necrologies,
photographs etc. As such, they are an
invaluable source of information for people who wish to learn about these
communities and the people who lived within them. As most of the books were
written in Yiddish and Hebrew, our mission is to make available the
"treasures" they contain available to a much wider audience by
translating them into English (and some other

languages) and this comes about thanks to a worldwide
team of volunteers who share the vision behind the Yizkor Book Project.

Of course, as these books are quite often extremely long
- 600 pages or more, the translation of them takes a great deal of time and
financial resources. Each time we manage to place an entire book online, it is
always a memorable milestone for our group and this past month two such
projects were completed. So, I would like to take this opportunity to send out
my many thanks to:

- Ann Belinsky and Harvey Spitzer for the incredible
achievement of completely translating the Karelichy, Belarus Yizkor book

- Seth Morgulas and Helen Rosenstein Wolf for their
mammoth task of preparing the text files from the English version of the
Kozienice, Poland Yizkor book

The
Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV)
will hold a general meeting, co–sponsored with Temple Adat Elohim, on Monday,
November 3, 2014 7:00-9:00 PM at Temple Adat Elohim 2420 E. Hillcrest
Drive, Thousand Oaks, CA

NOTE: Please note the
different day of week and time for this meeting.

The
Topic: The Margarine Moonshiners from Minsk: Conducting
Story-Driven Research

Tammy
Hepps takes a journey through story-telling that is funny and yet a
genealogical journey that teaches us how to research. Hepps’ routine search on
her great-grandfather revealed the shocking surprise that he had been
incarcerated in Leavenworth, which led her to trace a group of brothers and
brothers-in-law recently emigrated from Minsk, who set out to sell margarine as
butter in defiance of the law. Hepps uncovered the hijinks of her
great-grandfather, who fled with his family repeatedly before the feds finally
nabbed him, the brother-in-law he fingered who was excommunicated for selling
lard as butter, another brother-in-law who was arrested for threatening to kill
a witness, and more. Hepps uses numerous historical and genealogical
repositories to retrace her journey to get to the bottom of this long-concealed
chapter in her family history. You will learn how you can better pursue the
fascinating leads in your family trees when you think like a story teller.

Speaker:
Tammy A. Hepps is
the creator of Treelines.com, a family story-sharing website and winner of the
RootsTech 2013 Developer Challenge. She has fourteen years of experience in
digital media with a degree from Harvard. Hepps has been working on her family
tree for more than twenty years and combines in Treelines.com her depth in
genealogy, technology, and storytelling. She serves on the Board of Directors
for JewishGen and the Philadelphia Jewish Archive Center, and the Board of
Advisers for the NY Family History School.

The
Schmoozing Corner
which is held starting 6:40 PM will be facilitated by JGSCV founding
member and Secretary JGSCV, Debra Kay Blatt. The Schmoozing Corner
is available if you would like individual insights for your genealogical
pursuits from an experienced JGSCV member 20 minutes before each meeting.

5-Minute
Genealogical Hint: International Jewish Genealogy Month which is celebrated
during the month of Cheshvan - October 25 to November 22, 2014, honors our
Jewish ancestors through the pursuit of Jewish family history research.

Our
traveling library will be available starting at 6:30 PM. To see which
books are in our traveling library see our website under library- traveling (www.jgscv.org).

The
Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County is
dedicated to sharing genealogical information, techniques and research tools
with anyone interested in Jewish genealogy and family history. There is
no charge to attend the meeting. Anyone may join JGSCV.

2015
Membership Drive:
We have started our 2015 membership drive-- annual dues paid now are good
through December 2015. Dues are $25 for an individual and $30 for a family.
Forms are available at the meeting, on the JGSCV website—under Membership- and
in the JGSCV newsletter, Venturing Into Our Past.

Directions: Take 101 Freeway -
exit Rancho Road in Thousand Oaks, go north (if coming from the west, cross
Thousand Oaks Blvd ) to E. Hillcrest Drive turn right on E. Hillcrest go about
1.3 miles (just east of Conejo School Road) Temple is on the right. There are
approximately 75 parking spots within the complex. There is no parking on
Hillcrest Drive . You may park in the complex or on any of the side streets.

I
previously posted about PBS’s 10-part series, Finding Your Roots with Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. This is a reminder about the upcoming November 4 program “Our
People, Our Traditions," which had ancestral research input by Jewish
Records Indexing-Poland (JRI-PL).

The
three personalities where the 5-million Polish Jewish records database was a
key resource are: attorney Alan Dershowitz, Grammy Award winning singer
Carole King and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and screen writer and
playwright Tony Kushner. All three have deep roots in Poland.

JRI-Poland’s
online database was involved in both the starting point and in documenting the
ancestry of all three peoples’ stories.

Check
your local listing for your local PBS station. The program usually
shows at 8PM Eastern and 7PM Central.

The
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced that they will be
posting online with free public access its Poland collection from
1945-1949. This collection was confiscated by the Communist
Authorities. The collection documents the JDCs efforts to assist
holocaust survivors following the holocaust.

The
Indiana Commission on Public Records and Ancestry.com have announced an
agreement to digitize 13 million birth certificates, death certificates and
marriage records. The birth and death records go back to the early 1900’s
and the marriage records date from 1958-2005.

The
records older than 75 years will start becoming available in 2015 and be
completed in 2016- the centennial of Indiana.

The
records will be available on Ancestry.com where they will be available by
subscription. After three years the records will be available free through the
state archives.